


Squad Goals (Stay Together Forever)

by burglebezzlement



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Birthday, Canon-typical levels of things going wrong before they go very very right, Curses, F/F, Getting Together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-12
Updated: 2018-10-12
Packaged: 2019-07-24 15:01:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16177502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Valencia's birthday is cursed. It's just how things are. Like how she's super-good at yoga, or how ghosts are always obsessed with her.Nothing's going to change that — but maybe she's willing to let Heather and Rebecca try.





	Squad Goals (Stay Together Forever)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DCBrierton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DCBrierton/gifts).



> Happy Femslashex!
> 
> This fic departs from canon sometime shortly after _Who Needs Josh When You Have a Girl Group?_ I can't take credit for the idea of a birthday curse, which is a long-standing sitcom trope that seemed like it'd fit into the Crazy Ex-Girlfriend universe. And of course the title is from the lyrics to Friendtopia.

Valencia’s halfway into a bottle of Ruby Vixen rosé, slumped down on the couch. It was a long day of yoga classes, and she’s letting the sounds of Rebecca and Heather’s voices wash over her. 

She’s surprised when Rebecca turns to her. 

“Long day?” Rebecca asks.

“Yeah.” Valencia drops her head down to the arm of the couch. “Not bad, just… long. Penelope was back again.”

“Penelope! The worst!” Rebecca splashes more wine into all of their glasses. “Who’s Penelope? Why do we hate her?”

“Backseat yoga teacher,” Valencia says. She had to endure two classes of Penelope “helpfully” correcting Valencia’s poses. She took Penelope aside for a little chat after the second class, which resulted in Penelope storming off, promising to ruin Valencia’s name all across Instagram. 

“She sounds like a dick,” Heather says, after Valencia’s told them the full story. Heather hands Valencia an afghan while Rebecca sputters about defamation lawsuits. 

Valencia lets them talk, feeling warmed by how angry they are on her behalf. It’s weird — all those years she avoided getting too close to other girls, she was avoiding this. Having people who care about her. People who have her back. 

She waited too long to find this.

“I love you guys,” she says, not gauging the words. Just wanting to let them know.

Rebecca’s face does that thing it does, sometimes, where she squinches her eyes up with emotion. “We love you too!” She hugs Valencia, enthusiastic and wine-drunk, and Valencia lets herself smell Rebecca’s hair.

“Okay, okay.” Heather, the least responsible of the three on paper, but always the one to pull the other two back. “So what’s the next order of Girl Group business?”

“Birthdays,” Rebecca says. “I saw the cutest set of photos on Instagram the other day — one of my cousins took a girl group trip to Palm Springs with her besties. It looked _amazing_. We need to do that.”

“My birthday isn’t until December,” Heather says.

“And my birthday was right before our girl group get together,” Rebecca says. She looks off into the distance. “Hey, which day did we officially get together? Do we go by the date of the first photo we were all tagged in, or by our first official girl’s night out, or…. how does that work?”

“I don’t think friend anniversaries are a thing,” Heather says.

“They totally should be!” Rebecca raises a glass. “To us!”

Heather looks over at Valencia. “So when’s your birthday?”

Valencia purses her lips. “I don’t celebrate my birthday.”

Her voice is brittle, her leave-it-alone voice, but Heather ignores that.

“Come on. When is it?”

Rebecca turns back to Valencia, her eyes narrowing. “Yeah, I didn’t see anything when I checked your Facebook.”

“Because I don’t celebrate it,” Valencia snaps, and then she reminds herself to slow down, to take a breath. She’s trying to unlearn how she was with Josh, how she’s been before now. Heather and Rebecca — she can’t imagine not having them in her life. “Look, it’s stupid.”

Heather looks over at Rebecca. “Stupider than kidnapping someone? Stupider than —”

“We get it,” Rebecca says. “Come on, Valencia. We’re not going to think it’s stupid.”

Valencia takes a deep breath. “My birthday is cursed.”

Heather and Rebecca stare at her like she’s lost the plot. 

“I don’t think curses are real,” Heather says, carefully, like she’s trying to respect Valencia’s belief system but also knows it’s complete bullshit.

“You know what happened on my seventeenth birthday? I totaled my father’s car.” Valencia sits up and starts gesturing with her wineglass. “I ran a red light and we got hit by a Fedex truck. All the airbags deployed. I could smell that stupid airbag dust at the back of my sinuses for weeks.”

Rebecca shakes her head. “A car accident could happen to —”

“I was taking my road test for my driver’s license,” Valencia says.

“Wow.” Heather reaches over and squeezes Valencia’s hand. “That sucks, dude. But I still don’t think —”

“You think that’s my only bad birthday?” Valencia purses her lips. “On my eighth birthday, my grandmother died. On my fourteen birthday, I got my period during gym class and bled all over my shorts. My gerbil ran away on my sixth birthday. It’s a thing. Math says it’s a thing. It’s like how ghosts are always obsessed with me. It’s just how things are.”

“You just didn’t have us for those birthdays.” Rebecca says it like it solves everything.

And for a moment, Valencia wants to believe. Wishes she could have the kind of faith Rebecca has in their friendship — the faith that the three of them, together, can make anything different.

* * *

They’re hanging out at Home Base, a week or two later, when Kevin asks to see Valencia’s ID.

“You see me all the time,” Valencia snaps. She’s just trying to get a damn pitcher of margaritas.

“Corporate policy,” Kevin says. 

He looks nervous. It’s not like that’s weird. Valencia’s used to making bartenders nervous. 

She turns back to wave at Heather and Rebecca, makes a _can you believe this_ face at them. They make sympathy faces back, and Valencia turns back to retrieve her ID from Kevin, along with the pitcher of margaritas. 

She doesn’t think anything of it.

* * *

Valencia’s birthday, a few days later.

She wakes up with the sunrise, like she always does. But there’s a difference today — a weight next to her in bed, someone close by.

 _I’m still dreaming_ , she thinks, still sleep-fogged. She’s had this dream before. 

“Happy Birthday,” Rebecca says.

“Hey.” Valencia stretches, and then looks at Rebecca, snuggled up in the bed next to you. Rebecca’s in lawyer-clothes, not the flowing silk nightgown with the really skimpy top that she’s usually wearing when Valencia has this dream, but that’s dream logic for you. The business clothes probably represent something from Valencia’s subconscious, something she needs to work out.

“Rebecca wanted to give you breakfast in bed,” Heather says, from the doorway.

“We didn’t want you to think we forgot,” Rebecca says, her head falling onto Valencia’s shoulder, a solid, real weight, and Valencia realizes that it’s not a dream. 

She blinks. “How did you get in?”

“You should hide your key better.” Rebecca’s snuggled into Valencia’s side and it’s all very confusing.

Heather puts a green smoothie down on Valencia’s bedside. “One breakfast smoothie,” she says. “We didn’t forget the kale.”

Valencia’s still catching up. “How did you know my birthday was today? You weren’t supposed to….” She trails off, thinking about it. Of course. Kevin. “Really? Kevin? Isn’t that a breach of bartender-customer confidentiality?”

“I mean, maybe, but he’s totally scared of me.” Heather hugs Valencia, one-armed, and then pulls Rebecca off the bed. “Come on. Breakfast in bed accomplished.”

“We still have to tell her about the rest of it!” Rebecca protests, but she lets Heather pull her away.

“Yeah, we figured you wouldn’t want a big party or anything, since you have that whole curse deal or whatever. So we’re going to —” Heather breaks off as Rebecca puts a hand over her mouth.

“Secret,” Rebecca says. “Very secret.” She removes her hand.

“Fine.” Heather rolls her eyes. “But, like, dress nice tonight, okay? Like fancy restaurant nice.”

Rebecca fake-gasps. “Heather!” 

Valencia stays there, watching them leave, and wonders. Maybe this birthday could be different.

Maybe. She picks up the smoothie and pokes at it. It’s her usual order from Cup of Boba. Heather remembered, which gives her a moment of warm fuzzies.

She drinks the smoothie while getting dressed. No green dye, accidentally added, dying her teeth green. No anaphylaxis from an allergy to a mystery ingredient. The smoothie is just a smoothie.

The curse must be lulling her into a false sense of security.

* * *

Valencia buys a dress.

It’s short. It’s black. It’s super-tight. It wasn’t on sale.

She knows better. She knows it’s just going to end up ripped while running from an escaped zoo gator (seventh birthday) or covered in mud from Truckasaurus Rex (twenty-second birthday, and the last time she let Josh Chan pick the entertainment) or filled with itching powder (fifteenth birthday, and no, she still hasn’t forgiven her parents for holding her Quinceañera on her actual birthday). 

The look in Rebecca’s eyes when she shows up makes it all worth it. 

Valencia wonders, sometimes, if the others dream about her the way she dreams about them. It’s probably normal, having your two besties show up in your dreams, dressed in skimpy lingerie. It’s probably some metaphor for, like, the intimacy of female friendship. It has to be.

It’s not like she and Rebecca haven’t made out before. And yeah, maybe Valencia sometimes thinks about what would have happened if she hadn’t pushed Rebecca away. If they’d left Josh at Spider’s, stumbled back to her place, sloppy-drunk, inhibitions lowered, ready to —

“You look amazing,” Rebecca says, her voice low, and Valencia meets her eyes.

Yeah. 

Totally normal.

Heather shows up a few minutes later. She doesn’t normally dress up, so Valencia’s not surprised she’s wearing pants. She’s got a sparkly top on, though, and her curls are pulled back with a fancy clip.

“Hey,” Heather says, hugging Valencia. “You look, like, super-hot.”

“Thanks!” Valencia hugs her back, carefully keeping her face out of the crook of Heather’s neck. “You guys look amazing.”

“Rebecca wanted to get a party bus,” Heather says. “But I was like… we need to start small here. Baby steps.”

“So we got a limo!” Rebecca throws her arms wide, like she’s closing a musical number on Broadway.

Heather snorts. “Small by Rebecca standards.”

“Hey, you try finding a limo on one week’s notice for the night of Homecoming.” Rebecca leans against Valencia’s other side. “Let’s get going, birthday girl.”

The limo is amazing. Rebecca’s got it stocked with cheese and wine — she even remembered Valencia’s favorite soy cheese. They spend the first few minutes pouring wine and sprawling out on the leather seats.

They’re on the freeway, headed west, when there’s an ominous sound from beneath the floor.

Valencia sits up, instantly on alert. “Did you guys hear that?”

“It’s nothing.” Rebecca takes another sip of her wine. “It’s fine.”

“No, I think I heard something,” Valencia says, and there’s another knock before the limo’s smooth ride turns into a thumping, bumping ride as the driver pulls over to the side of the freeway.

Heather rolls down the divider between the passenger space and the driver. “What’s going on?”

“We broke down,” the driver says, bluntly, before getting out into traffic and slamming the door. 

Rebecca looks guilty. “I guess that’s why they said they didn’t have a free limo,” she mumbles.

“What?” Heather sits up. “Then how did we —” 

“I… may have bribed the dispatcher,” Rebecca says. “Valencia, I am so sorry. They said something about scheduled maintenance and it’s not like my car breaks down when I ignore the oil light, so I figured —” 

Valencia looks out at the lights on the freeway, and then back at the other two, their faces dimly lit. She smiles. “See?”

“What?” Heather looks confused.

“I told you.” Valencia’s feeling weirdly calm. “I’m cursed.” 

“No,” Heather says. “Curses aren’t real. This is a thing that happened because Rebecca bribed the nice limo people.”

Valencia takes another piece of soy cheese. “Oh, it’s real.”

Rebecca’s eyes light up. “But maybe this is it for this year! Maybe it’s over now!”

“It’s not.” Valencia stretches and lets her head fall back against the headrest. It can’t be over. It’s never over. Not until midnight.

But for the first time, she’s curious to see what goes wrong next.

* * *

It turns out you can order a Lyft to pick you up on the side of the freeway, which is how they get to Palm Springs, Rebecca’s not-that-surprising secret destination. They get to the resort to find the restaurant roped off, a discreet sign explaining that the restaurant is closed for renovations.

“What?” Rebecca’s eyes go wide. “I had reservations!”

Valencia gives Heather a look, an _I told you_ look, and Heather gives her a _no such thing as curses_ look in return. Rebecca storms off to find a concierge. 

A few minutes later, they’re settling into a cabana by the pool.

“This wasn’t the plan,” Rebecca informs them, as they settle into lounge chairs to wait for food. “The plan was fancy dinner.”

“It’s cool.” Valencia leans back. The sun is down, and the desert air is chilly. There’s something fun about being by a pool in a fancy dress. Like they were on their way to prom but decided to go swimming instead.

The cabana’s nice, even if the pool’s deserted apart from the three of them. The curtains are pulled back and tied, and woven grass decor-y things along the side wall hide the view of the parking lot. 

While Valencia and Rebecca lounge, Heather goes to the bar to investigate. The booze is locked up — nobody’s on shift — but Heather finds the sound system and hooks her iPhone up and hits play on a slow, mellow playlist Valencia’s never heard before.

“There.” Heather flicks a switch, and the Edison bulbs strung over the cabana area light up. “Now it’s a party.”

Valencia smiles. She’s never wanted a party. Not after what happened with the norovirus outbreak the last time her parents threw her a birthday party when she was a kid, on her ninth birthday. But this, just hanging out with Rebecca and Heather — this is good. This is always good, whether it’s her birthday or not.

Dinner comes, and the hotel staff are cool and don’t report them for hijacking the lights and the sound system. It’s not the molecular gastronomy tasting menu Rebecca apparently had planned, but Valencia’s never said no to a quinoa bowl.

The hotel staff bring in an enormous chocolate soufflé for desert, covered in powdered sugar. Rebecca pulls out her purse and brings out candles and a lighter.

“They didn’t have a cake,” she says, putting the candles around the outside edge of the soufflé and lighting them. “I mean, they had pieces of cake, but not one cake. And I didn’t want, like, Franken-Cake. So I had them make this.”

Valencia goes to blow out the candles.

She’s still leaning in when the powdered sugar, lifted by her breath, ignites, and a giant fireball blossoms up and engulfs her face. She jerks back, and suddenly the fire’s gone, but —

“Ohmygod are you okay oh my god.” Rebecca leans in, looking at Valencia, cell phone in hand. “I’m calling 911, okay?”

Valencia touches her face. Her skin feels a little like she just did an at-home acid peel, but she’s okay. “It’s — I’m good. I’m fine.”

“Uh, you guys?” Heather’s looking behind them. “I think the cabana’s on fire.”

There’s a snapping sound, and then a spray of sparks from the side wall, where the decorative grass is on fire, flames spreading along the side of the cabana.

“Into the pool,” Valencia says, grabbing Rebecca and Heather’s hands and pulling them behind her. “Right now!”

They run across the pool deck and plunge into the water. Rebecca comes up sputtering. Heather’s staring at the cabana, the firelight reflected in her eyes. Valencia treads water.

“This shouldn’t have happened,” Rebecca says. “California fire code is really strict.”

“Someone should have told the cabana that,” Heather says.

They tread water, watching the flames as the hotel staff runs out with fire extinguishers. Waiting for the fire trucks to arrive.

* * *

The resort finds them a room. Rebecca, dripping wet and faintly scorched, goes down to the concierge to demand loaner clothes, and returns with three plush robes.

“I told them they were legally responsible for the condition of their cabanas,” she says, throwing the robes across one of the king-sized beds. “And this is what they give us. Robes.”

Heather leans her chin over Valencia’s shoulder. “My phone still works,” she says. “I can Postmates us some clothes in the morning.”

Across the room, Rebecca strips off her wet dress, suddenly standing there in a damp bra and panties, and Valencia’s mouth goes dry. She and Heather are still in their wet clothes, standing together, and Valencia wonders if Heather feels the same way.

She can’t. Right?

Heather hugs Valencia and lets go before handing her one of the robes. “You get first shower,” she says. “First shower always goes to the birthday girl.”

“Oh my god.” Rebecca’s eyes go wide. “I ruined your birthday, didn’t I?”

Valencia goes and hugs her, awkwardly, trying not to pay attention to the way Rebecca’s skin, still damp, feels against hers. 

“Trust me,” she says. “You didn’t.”

She showers quickly, taking just enough time to comb some of the hotel’s conditioner through her hair and pull it back. When she comes out, swaddled in the robe, Heather and Rebecca are debating the best way to rescue water-logged cell phones. They’ve got the things from their purses spread out over a room service cart, and there’s an ice bucket filled with —

“Is that rice?” Valencia asks.

“Hey! “ Heather turns to her. “Yeah. Turns out threatening these guys with a lawsuit is like, really effective. At least at getting us rice, anyway.”

Valencia sorts through her stuff while the other two take showers. Her purse is singed and damp, but her wallet’s fine, and her phone might be fixable.

The dress is toast. Valencia puts it on a hanger anyway. 

“I’m sorry about the dress,” Rebecca says, from the bathroom doorway. Her hair is wet and hanging down to her shoulders. “You looked really hot in it.”

“It’s fine.” Valencia shrugs. “It’s my birthday. I knew that dress was doomed when I bought it.”

“I ruined your birthday.” Rebecca sighs.

“No way.” Valencia lies down on one of the beds, on her back, looking up at Rebecca. “Impossible. My birthdays come pre-ruined.”

Rebecca lies down beside her. “This was your worst birthday, wasn’t it? A fireball ate your face.”

Valencia shrugs. “This isn’t even, like, top-ten worst birthdays I’ve had. Trust me.”

Rebecca turns on her side, her hand resting just between them, so close Valencia could take it. “What was the worst one?”

“Maybe my eighth,” Valencia says, thinking about it. She starts telling Rebecca about that birthday, which leads to stories about the other terrible birthdays, about Truckasaurus and escaped zoo alligators and all the other things that make a face-eating fireball seem not that bad.

She’s on her twenty-third birthday (food poisoning on a boat) when Heather comes out of the bathroom, her hair damp and curly.

“I believe you now,” Heather says. “Your birthday is like, super-cursed.”

“No,” Rebecca insists. “I refuse. We can fix this.”

“I think we need to get some sleep and then figure things out in the morning,” Valencia says. “It’s almost midnight.”

“It’s only almost midnight! We have time!” Rebecca sits up and down at the alarm clock. “In the next — okay, five minutes. We can work with that.” She looks at Valencia. “What can we do, in the next five minutes, that can make this birthday great? Anything. Anything at all.”

“And by anything at all, we’re thinking anything that can get delivered tomorrow,” Heather says, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “Everything’s probably, like, closed by now.”

Valencia’s not sure why, even later. Whether it’s the wine they had beside the pool. The adrenaline from the fire. Whether it’s something that’s been building for months, since they became friends. Whether it’s been building since the night Rebecca shoved her tongue down Valencia’s throat in a darkened night club.

Maybe they’ve always been heading here.

Valencia sits up, cupping one hand along Rebecca’s cheek, and leans in to kiss her. Just barely, at first — just the touch of her lips on Rebecca’s, before Rebecca’s hand goes up to Valencia’s shoulder and she pulls her in. 

“Oh my god,” Rebecca says, when they break apart. “Oh my god.”

It sounds like a good _oh my god_. Valencia leans back in and kisses her again, just a nip of her teeth against Rebecca’s bottom lip. But Heather’s there now, just by Valencia’s shoulder, and it’s so easy for Valencia to turn, to lean in, the taste of Rebecca’s lips still on hers, and kiss Heather. 

Rebecca makes a noise from beside them, incoherent and excited, and then Valencia feels the warmth of Rebecca’s body behind her. Rebecca’s lips tracing their way down Valencia’s neck, Valencia’s shoulder. Heather kisses her back, her tongue enthusiastically exploring Valencia’s mouth, hands pulling Valencia’s robe back from her shoulders.

They slowly pull one another down onto the bed. It’s going to be a late checkout.

* * *

**One Year Later**

This year, it’s breakfast in bed for all three of them — bagels for Rebecca and Valencia’s green smoothie and a breakfast burrito for Heather. 

“We’re only moving the date because your birthday’s on a Thursday this year,” Rebecca says. “The restaurant will be more fun on the weekend.”

Valencia smiles, letting her chin rest on Rebecca’s head. She’s seen the way Rebecca spent the past three weeks replacing the smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Refilling the fire extinguishers. “Sure.”

On Valencia’s other side, Heather snorts. “Yeah. Valencia’s birthday totally isn’t why you scheduled an earthquake evacuation drill last week.”

“It was a general emergency drill,” Rebecca protests. “Ready.gov says everyone should run them!”

“It was sweet,” Valencia says. She kisses Rebecca’s hair. “I don’t want anything special for my birthday this year anyway.” Last year — last year made up for all the rest. Given the birthdays Valencia has had? That’s saying something.

“Oh my god.” Rebecca sits up, narrowly missing hitting Valencia’s nose. “Oh my god, you guys.”

Heather looks over at her. “What?”

“I just realized,” Rebecca says, her eyes wide with what looks like panic. “If it’s Valencia’s birthday — and we all kissed just before midnight — you guys, this is our anniversary. Not the friend-versary we celebrated last month. It’s today. And I haven’t done anything!”

Rebecca jumps out of bed, the bagel forgotten. “I have to go,” she says, pulling on some clothes. “No reason.”

Valencia and Heather watch her go. “Don’t worry,” Heather says. “I’ll go convince her our real anniversary is our first official date.”

“Thanks.” Valencia looks up at Heather.

Heather leans in and brushes a kiss across Valencia’s lips before pulling back. “Happy anniversary,” she says, smiling. 

Valencia smiles back. Her birthday might be cursed — fine. But this — their anniversary? This is something new. Something wonderful.


End file.
